checking/replacing underseat airbag sensor. Seat earthing????

[bk.bas99]

As per previous thread I have faulty airbag sensor (180) which is the one under the seat. In the Haynes book of overkill it says that the Seat airbag must remain earthed when removing the seat with a special loom (VAS 5094) or an earth wire run from the connector to an earth point. Is this essential as I can't find any reference to it on all of the how to guides on the net. I can't see how, as long as the battery is disconnected first, that there will be an issue as once power is disconnected the airbag, sensor etc must be 'dead'. ANYONE done this without issues. I have the old shareware VCDS so can reset and interrogate alarm codes but not anything else

[Col]

I've had the seats out of mine a few times without issue and have also had other airbags out and back in.

The safest way when working on airbags is to disconnect the battery then leave the car for fifteen minutes or so for any engery in the airbag system to dissapate. Rumour has it that there are capacitors in the airbag system that retain enough energy to deploy the bags if, lets say, the battery gets ripped out in a crash. No idea if this is true though.

But what I know is that I've disconnected the battery, gone indoors for a cup of tea and then back out to remove seats without issue.